Quote

I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms.

Thomas Browne

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Thomas Browne
Age: 77 †
Born: 1605
Born: October 19
Died: 1682
Died: October 19
Author
Philosopher
Physician
Physician Writer
Writer
London
England
Sir Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
Created
Express
Beauty
Bear
Toad
Call
Forms
Toads
Action
Actions
Elephant
Tell
Ugly
Elephants
Cannot
Shapes
Outward
Form
Bears
Inward
Best
Figures
Logic

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There are no grotesques in nature not anything framed to fill up empty cantons, and unnecessary spaces.
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There is a rabble among the gentry as well as the commonalty a sort of plebeian heads whose fancy moves with the same wheel as these men?in the same level with mechanics, though their fortunes do sometimes gild their infirmities and their purses compound for their follies.
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Were the happiness of the next world is as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.
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Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude.
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To ruminate upon evils, to make critical notes upon injuries, and be too acute in their apprehensions, is to add unto our own tortures, to feather the arrows of our enemies, to lash ourselves with the scorpions of our foes, and to resolve to sleep no more.
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Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years. Generations pass while families last not three oaks.
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Content may dwell in all stations. To be low but above contempt may be high enough to be happy.
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There is no such thing as solitude, nor anything that can be said to be alone and by itself but God, who is His own circle, and can subsist by Himself.
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Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, wherein stones and clouts make martyrs.
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Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living.
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Women do most delight in revenge.
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I believe the world grows near its end, yet is neither old nor decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruins of its own principles.
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For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order, or proportion, and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.
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For God is like a skilfull Geometrician.
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I intend no Monopoly, but a Community in Learning I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves.
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All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.
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Think not silence the wisdom of fools but, if rightly timed, the honor of wise men, who have not the infirmity, but the virtue of taciturnity.
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